The Respectability of Torture

St Mary’s University College, Thurs 1st August, 7.30pm

Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, was a whistleblower who was removed from his ambassadorial post by Tony Blair for exposing the Tashkent regime‟s use of rape and systematic torture, including the boiling to death of political opponents. He has also spoken out against Central Asia‟s appalling dictatorships, regimes which are allies of the West, involved in torture and rendition, and was accused of threatening MI6‟s relationship with the CIA. Now a human rights activist, author and broadcaster, he outlines the dynamics of torture and the hypocrisy of incriminated Western governments.

My first public appearance for a while will be in Belfast on 1 August where I shall be giving a talk. Long term readers of this blog will recall that, while my focus is largely on international affairs, the domestic political achievements I most hope to see are a united Ireland and an independent Scotland.

Screw a United Ireland, I am a Civil Servant and I dread to think what my pay would drop down to with the state of their economy.
Not really a good choice being ruled by the crooks in England or by the crooks down South. At least with the English I am better off and likely be less violence in my streets.
Our country is a long way off being ready for it and it will just start a new civil war off.

I’d very much like to see the UK become independent of the US. There is only one thing worse than being a serf to the masters of your own country, and that is seeing the masters of your own country servants to a foreign power. It is I think the ‘doubly dying’ Sir Walter Scott talked about in “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”

“Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said:
This is my own, my native land . . .”

Think that’s the priority. Even the excrescences (the UK ones) might care to consider it. Scotland: if they want it, in a fair and open referendum, what democrat can deny them? Ireland: not sure it wouldn’t be more troublesome to all than the present arrangement. Though economically more sensible, perhaps.

When statists talk in normative terms, that’s how you know that they’re trying to mitigate crimes. The US government’s moral handwringing over the peremptory norm of freedom from torture is exactly the same as Ted Bundy giving a soul-searching pre-execution interview. It’s all wheeling and dealing for clemency.

NI has quite a degree of autonomy at the moment, and it’s probably fair enough to say that cultural union is currently much more in vogue than political union.

Remember too that there will aways be those from lands near and afar who will seek to magnify any political dissent to their own purposes. It’s still there in NI at the moment and there’s a very similar version ongoing in England with EDL, UAF and Islamist protests etc.

“I’d very much like to see the UK become independent of the US. There is only one thing worse than being a serf to the masters of your own country, and that is seeing the masters of your own country servants to a foreign power.”

But is the U.K. a servant of the U.S. or are they both servants of another foreign power?

I admire your stance on torture etc. an awful lot. You waved goodbye to a decent career for a principle and I was brought up to respect that sort of thing and would do so even if I wasn’t in tune with the reasons for it. But I’m afraid your sentiments with regard to domestic British politics just look like parochial separatism to me. This archipelago is very small and we’re going to have to rub along together one way or another. We don’t have a choice. Our only choice is in how we live together. Rightly or wrongly, I just think that the governmental institutions we develop and adopt should reflect that immutable reality. We could dissolve into an array of city states if we were stupid enough – and I dare say some are – but what good would that do? And I write as one who is constantly appalled by the policies – foreign and domestic – coming out of Westminster and wish I could get rid of them. But I’ll take a whole lot of convincing that separatism is the answer.

Thank you, Flaming June, for those links. I suggest that all UK users of this website send the links to their MP and ask for her/his reaction. I will be doing so for my MP, Tessa Jowell. Let’s collate the responses.

I do not think the Catholics in Northern Ireland would ever accept union with Scotland. It would look like gerrymandering to assure a large Protestant majority and a small Catholic minority in the new state.

I think it’s possible that all the populations involved would be willing to accept a union of a united Ireland plus Scotland.

Good luck Craig. And don’t forget, as well as Eire doing what the >majority< of its citizens want, whether they happen to live in the liberated part or the foreign-occupied part, and as well as Scotland getting free of the damned ukstate, there's us in Cymru as well, needing liberation from seven hundred years of Engish-raj imperialism; and even — whisper it — the little nation of Kernow, which the English raj insolently call an English county.

Let's all be free. And that includes the poor bloody rank-and-file English. They need liberation too, as urgently as the rest of us, from the ukstate and the English raj and their grovelling-vassal status to the USAmerican empire.

” I’d very much like to see the UK become independent of the US. There is only one thing worse than being a serf to the masters of your own country, and that is seeing the masters of your own country servants to a foreign power. It is I think the ‘doubly dying’ Sir Walter Scott talked about in “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”

“Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said:
This is my own, my native land . . .”

As someone earlier stated secularisation serves the purpose of empowering the individual or at least leaves an impression of egalatarianism but really are we still entitled to share the freedoms we once had as a union.

Figures obtained by the BBC under a Freedom of Information request show that last year the Home Office identified nearly 100 suspected war criminals and that many of those individuals were believed to have been living in Britain for a number of years.

Suspects are believed to have come from a number of countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Rwanda, Serbia and Sri Lanka.

Now the Home Office is making robust noises and has vowed to ensure that Britain does not become “a refuge for war criminals.”

Four Rwandan men arrested in May this year are “suspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide that led to the deaths of an estimated 800,000 people.”

James Smith of Aegis, a charity involved in the prevention of crimes again humanity said: “If we don’t pursue those prosecutions, the UK could become known as a retirement home for war criminals.”

In addition, a Home Office spokesman said: “Anyone accused of these crimes should be put on trial in their home country and we will always seek to return them to face justice.”

In the light of the Home Office statement, I take it the relevant powers will be taking an equally robust stance towards Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Lord Goldsmith and Gordon Brown, who wrote the cheques for the illegal invasion of Iraq based on untruths and dodgy dossiers, which has resulted in significantly more than one million deaths and counting.

Or do suspected war criminals only get counted if they are black, Middle Eastern, eastern European or from further afield, while ours travel the globe with impunity?

O/T Will Theresa May reveal to the British public the names of these 100 organisations who have broken the law? We will probably be told that it would prejudice the ongoing investigations in Operation Tuleta. We have such an open society, NOT.

The Threat of Nuclear War, North Korea or the United States?
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, July 25, 2013

While the Western media portrays North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as a threat to Global Security, it fails to acknowledge that the US has being threatening North Korea with a nuclear attack for more than half a century.

On July 27, 2013, Armistice Day, Koreans in the North and the South will be commemorating the end of the Korean war (1950-53). Unknown to the broader public, the US had envisaged the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea at the very outset of the Korean War in 1950. In the immediate wake of the war, the US deployed nuclear weapons in South Korea for use on a pre-emptive basis against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in violation of the July 1953 Armistice Agreement.

The British Medical Journal published an article entitled” WHO suppressed evidence on effects of depleted uranium, expert says” in November 2006. It suggested that earlier WHO reports were compromised by the omission of a full account of depleted uranium genotoxicity.
Additionally, recent revelations by Hans von Sponeck, the former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, suggest that WHO may be susceptible to pressure from its member states. Mr. von Sponeck has said that “The US government sought to prevent WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.”
Is it time to prepare to bring the perpetrators before the ICC​

Sofia:
The primary intention isn’t to burn it: the idea is to give a projectile enough density (or if you prefer weight relative to its cross sectional area) to penetrate armour. In the process it gets pulverised, and burns. As a byproduct of the nuclear industry, it is relatively available, denser and more convenient than, say tungsten (which can be used in DIME munitions, as a powder, because it doesn’t burn)

The gas cloud generated by the heat, and the compounds contained, that are in nano particle formats can breach the body defences, and barriers and lodge in various organs, that in turn due to the ceramic nature of these nano particles, body chemistry cannot break these ceramics down and render these harmless, in turn leading to many devastating diseases.

“Al Qaeda will “spare no effort” in setting free inmates at the US-run Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the terrorist network’s leader pledged. The warning comes after a series of attacks by militant groups on prisons in Libya, Iraq and Pakistan.

“Ayman al-Zawahri voiced his threats in an audio address published on an Islamist website. The authenticity of the recording has not been verified, Reuters reports.

America is truly the axis of evil in the Middle East. Buying and trafficking arms, training and funding rebel fighters, are considered U.S. investments in the future of M.E. conflicts, which, at any time, can be paid with interest via a direct U.S. military invasion.

Paralysed by Israel’s high level influence and enervated by seductive Israeli lobbies, America took advantage of the ‘Arab Spring’ and declared that Libya was enduring a revolution, having engineered anti-government demonstrations in the eastern city of Benghazi. This then was the trigger, the spark for Emperor Obama to militarily intervene even though no such mass lobby was observed in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

The same dynamic occurred in Syria where rebellion was ‘scammed’ into false revolution by using trained religious extremists who became the motor force of the rebels doing the vast majority of the fighting and distorting the true nature of the rebels as an anti-Assad coalition.

The most effective fighting force among the Syrian rebels is Jabhat al-Nursa, religious extremists that use Iraq ‘death squad’ terrorist tactics and are directly affiliated with al-Qaeda and the CIA.

Recently this group’s dominance is being threatened by another Islamist extremist terror group, Ahrar al-Sham, which is funded and populated by Qatar and which is thought to have around 30,000 fighters in Syria.

While America pursues pro-Western geo-political goals by ‘strings attached’ manipulation, at least 25,000 Syrian children have been murdered and 6.8 million Syrians need aid according to OCHA figures – http://www.unocha.org/crisis/syria –

To insist that NATO or Gulf monarchies supply arms to the rebels is, in essence, to invite the United States to directly participate in the Syrian conflict on a deeper level (the Emperor Obama administration is already supplying thousands of tons of arms to the Syrian rebels covertly through the CIA).

Currently the same manipulative dynamic is transpiring in Egypt with exactly the same U.S. investments in a future conflict with Iran intended to throttle energy supplies to China and energy cooperation with Russia.

Without such massive control from America, Britain and allies these and imminent conflicts would have ended long ago and thousands of innocent lives would have been spared.

Demanding that this bloodletting continue — especially without ANY prospect for a successful end — is to demand the destruction of an already suffering mother earth.

The U.S. Occupy Movement was no revolution. It is time for the American people to be in a position to effectively assert their power in order to change the U.S. administration power dynamic of American society in their favor AND REMOVE ‘President’ Obama.

A nation can be inhabited by entirely revolutionary-minded people, but there is no revolution unless people are massively asserting their power in the streets, workplaces, and neighborhoods.

That connection is how we, as a human race, evolve and cheat extinction.

“Born in the US, he is a US citizen. But under the British Nationality Act of 1981, anyone born outside the UK after 1 January 1983 who has a mother who is a UK citizen by birth is British by descent.”

Manning doesn’t hold a British passport and doesn’t consider himself to be a UK citizen, but he is unquestionably half Welsh (the Foreign Office, notably, has stressed he is “British by descent”). Though he was born in the US, his parents met when Brian Manning, a US naval intelligence analyst, was stationed in the very southwest tip of Wales; Susan Manning, then Fox, was a local girl from Haverfordwest. An older sister, Casey, was born in Wales; Bradley followed in 1987 after his parents had returned to the tiny Oklahoma town of Crescent where Brian took up a job in a car rental firm. The marriage was not a success, and in 2001, after Brian walked out, Susan returned to her home town with her children.

Wikipedia tells me that he probably has British citizenship, but may have had to formally apply for it. Does it matter? See William Hague for an independent champion of British rights against US interests, pmsl.

Yes, let’s get Bradley Manning home. Perhaps we could do an exchange with all the US citizens we have in custody! Oh, sorry, I was forgetting we are the slaves of the US. It makes that laugh of a nationalist anthem, Rule Britannia, laughable. “Britons never never never shall be slaves”.

Right, Dreoilin. Re. coverage, it’s predictable. And I wouldn’t expect the conservative press to do anything other than emphasise the fact that Manning, a US citizen and regarding himself solely as such, signed the US military’s version of the Official Secrets Act, was put in a position of trust, and betrayed it comprehensively. Which is the (uncomfortable, maybe) fact. He got the book thrown at him -predictably, since discipline needs to be maintained in anyone’s armed forces – and IMO got a reasonably fair disposal in the circumstances.

The real issues are, again IMO, the effectiveness of US military security versus the incredibly trivial material that attracts a security classification there, and the near absence of any official concern regarding some of the actions, equally forbidden by military law, which were revealed by his disclosures.

“After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own “Rules of Engagement”.”

NEW YORK & AMSTERDAM: In the wake of the US PRISM Internet surveillance scandal, companies are revisiting how they do business online and beefing up their privacy practices to protect their users.

Private search engines StartPage and Ixquick have pioneered a new advance in encryption security this week, becoming the first search engines in the world to enable “Perfect Forward Secrecy” or PFS in combination with a more secure version of SSL encryption known as TLS 1.1. and 1.2 , which works by setting up a secure “tunnel” through which users’ search traffic cannot be intercepted.

…With SSL alone, if a target website’s “private key” can be obtained once in the future – perhaps through court order, social engineering, attack against the website, or cryptanalysis – that same key can then be used to unlock all other historical traffic of the affected website. For larger Internet services, that could expose the private data of millions of people.

StartPage and Ixquick have now deployed a defense against this known as “Perfect Forward Secrecy,” or PFS.

PFS uses a different “per-session” key for each data transfer, so even if a site’s private SSL key is compromised, data that was previously transmitted is still safe. Those who want to decrypt large quantities of data sent using PFS face the daunting task of individually decrypting each separate file, as opposed to obtaining a single key to unlock them all.

This can be likened to replacing the master “skeleton key” that unlocks every room in a building with a tight security system that puts a new lock on each door and then creates a unique key for each lock.

In addition to its pioneering use of PFS, earlier this month StartPage and Ixquick deployed Transport Layer Security, or TLS, encryption versions TLS 1.1 and 1.2 on all of its servers. TLS is an upgraded form of SSL encryption, which sets up a secure “tunnel” that protects users’ search information.

CEO Robert Beens urges other companies to upgrade to these new technologies. “With Perfect Forward Secrecy and TLS 1.1 and 1.2 combined, we are once again leading the privacy industry forward. For the sake of their users’ privacy, we strongly recommend other search engines follow our lead.”

I didn’t realise that it was torturing Tony himself who had you sacked presumably because your revelations might have harmed his future business interests. Best of luck with the lecture,let us hope it opens a few more eyes to the horrors this revolting state has attempted to normalise.It is interesting in a grotesque kind of way that the U.S.military has said the retarded psychopaths involved in the collateral murder incident were operating in accordance with their “Rules of engagement” which appears to mean anyone anywhere may be slaughtered but then Obomber has made that crystal clear has he not? Anyway watch your back and have a great time.May I join others in thanking Dreoilin for a very funny piece ,I needed a lift!

The scheme was first published by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman in 1976, although it had been separately invented a few years earlier within GCHQ, the British signals intelligence agency, by JamesH. Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm J. Williamson but was kept classified. In 2002, Hellman suggested the algorithm be called Diffie–Hellman–Merkle key exchange in recognition of Ralph Merkle’s contribution to the invention of public-key cryptography (Hellman, 2002).

O/T
This country is really good at setting up serious case reviews after a child like this little chap has been murdered, in this case by his own mother and her partner who have been found guilty of murder. They will be sentenced on Friday. Why didn’t the school intervene? Look at the list of his injuries.

This country is really good at setting up serious case reviews after a child like this little chap has been murdered

I am so sorry for the little tyke who died so hopeless and alone. It would take nothing to keep that little Daniel alive, and happy. I am really upset, for him and for the other little angels, who are going hungry, afraid, and in pain, across the planet.

So far only the evil bitch of his mother and duane dibbley of her boyfriend, have been charged and convicted, and may these evil bastard suffer in hell (I really wish I could be afforded five minutes alone with these two specimens, these fuckwits would soon understand the meaning of pain, and hopeless).

Fact that none of the fucking teachers in the school that he attended have been hauled over the coals. These heartless bastards were locking the food away and not one of them ever thought why poor little tyke was stealing food, and eating left over and discarded food; in the rubbish bins, off the floor, and even the garden. These bastards stand culpable of joint enterprise in little Daniel’s murder.

“O/T
This country is really good at setting up serious case reviews after a child like this little chap has been murdered, in this case by his own mother and her partner who have been found guilty of murder. They will be sentenced on Friday. Why didn’t the school intervene? Look at the list of his injuries.”
______________

The answer to that, dear Flaming June, is perhaps that a lot of the teachers, civil servants and local government officials appointed by the Labour govt and Labour councils in their attempts to create a body of faithful future Labour voters are bloody useless at their jobs.

Since my last posting on the previous thread about those who really like to throw the “anti-West” accusation around, but are not so hot at trying to justify it, that the best that they could come up with was the demented ramblings of the psychotic Unabomber !! This would be hysterical if it was tongue in cheek, but apparently this is presented as credible argumentation !! Beyond parody, and a true indication of how detached from the rational these people must be.

I also noticed a debate about the nature of compassion, which is obviously an emotion that Jemand has never experienced, otherwise he/she would not have written the nonsense that was posted, and despite Dreoilin attempts to explain this most natural of human emotions, we can only conclude that unfortunately Jemand is one of those emotionally impaired individuals who are simply incapable of experiencing such basic human emotions.

Talking of which, how ironic that it was Villager who claimed that compassionate Lefties are really ” bitter losers filled with hate, envy and jealousy”, and yet felt the need & choice to post the mean & petty “Oh What a good girl am I !” comment aimed at F/J-Mary, after she has posted a link to the horrendous case of the murdered child, in contrast to Fedup’s angry & compassionate post in response to this case.

“The answer to that, dear Flaming June, is perhaps that a lot of the teachers,
civil servants and local government officials appointed by the Labour govt and Labour councils in their attempts to create a body of faithful future Labour voters are bloody useless at their jobs.”

That’s an interesting personification of complex structural problems, albeit indicating a rather narrow village mentality.

Is there some fundamental policy division between Tory and New Labour on these issues that might otherwise explain this curious phenomenon?

Most policy decisions are made at EU level. I think about 80%. Then you’ve got corporate, banker and military welfare to consider.

Pathetic and infantile responses from the Resident Invigilator and Villager in that order.

btw if I am a ‘good girl’ (I believe Villager is thinking of this nursery rhyme:
Little Jack Horner sat in the corner
Eating his Christmas pie,
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum
And said “What a good boy am I!”)

The Snowden kill-shot nonsense originated with Sorcha Faal as far as I can figure. Therefore complete nonsense.

There are various thread elsewhere about “holes in the sun” right now. Mainly based on an appallingly bad Fox news report about a Coronal Hole.

Not that any of this means that a large CME definitely wont be on the way (the sun is misbehaving but it is quieter than expected – who knows if it is the calm before the storm – solar physicists are still trying to figure it out) but the Snowden claim appears false.

Thanks AlcAnon; It seems it’s an old story someone tacked onto Snowden. I keep abreast of sun activity, and sunspots have been unusually scarce and mild. I’m also interested in ISON’s potential demise as it approaches our Sun.

”The Iraqi people already know that there are spiralling rates of birth defects and miscarriages, they see it every day. The research carried out by the Iraqi Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation will provide the confirmation required to spur research into the causes and for action to be taken to mitigate this health crisis.

Children and families continue to suffer the consequences of a war they did not cause, so no more delays, no more politics: the WHO and Iraqi Ministry of Health must release the study data for swift and independent peer-review in an open access journal.”

With more and more sites starting to deploy variants of Diffie=Hellman key-exchange it seems to me that Xkeyscore can’t mine into that data – at least not just by recording the traffic. I will assume “they” have obtained or can obtain private server keys for all the key destinations on the web and so can decrypt most normal https traffic.

However unless there is a huge breakthrough we don’t know about then it would seem that they can’t easily look inside traffic protected by this additional step. No webservers were using PFS at the time of the 2008 PRISM presentation so it wouldn’t have been an issue.

Physicsl access to the servers themselves would seem to be required to monitor PFS protected traffic.

Could in theory knock out the power grid across the planet blowing transformers beyond repair and lead to collapse of civilisation. There’s a new spurious claim that we just missed a Carrington flare but it wasn’t anything particular impressive and wouldn’t have done much if it had been earth directed.

Note we would have many hours warning of such an event on the way and steps can be taken to shutdown grids and isolate equipment in advance. If a really bad shock hit the ACE early warning spacecraft I guess we would see contingency plans go into action.

A far less powerful geomagnetic storm from an X15 flare knocked out much of the Canadian grid in 1989.

Dreoilin; The connection to Snowden relates to his access to FEMA docs. They prepare for regional or national disasters, and theoretically, the advent of CME’s of sufficient strength (EMP) to fry electronic components is the threat. Short of apocalypse, if you wish to protect your cellphone or laptop, there are Faraday Cages to keep you jacked-in. A simple low-cost FC is a 32 gallon galvanized ash can.

“Pathetic and infantile responses from the Resident Invigilator…” sobs the Frequent Poster, who is too thick to see that I was agreeing with her.

She wrote, à propos the killing of the little boy :

“Why didn’t the school intervene? Look at the list of his injuries.

And my suggestion was that the school teachers (and the social workers weren’t doing their bloody jobs properly.

And I went on to make the point – perhaps too indirectly for some? – that the rather large increase in jobs in the public sector under Labour obviously didn’t do much to improve and sharpen up service (and probably wasn’t intended to either).

Fukushima is a boiling cauldron, AlcAnon, as you know. The wall is not holding. Contaminated ground water keeps rising and leaking to the ocean. When will other nations start to become alarmed at TEPCO’s revisionist info and incompetence?

And yes, I think Snowden could access anything and no one can predict what will happen wrt CME’s, even predictive models should it cascade into the sun.

“Note we would have many hours warning of such an event on the way and steps can be taken to shutdown grids and isolate equipment in advance. If a really bad shock hit the ACE early warning spacecraft I guess we would see contingency plans go into action.”

In Britain the procedure is to open everything up, close every switch on the grid and spread the load, create one huge sink.

Well, I’m the fairest of persons : I rebuke when rebukes are deserved and praise when praise is due.

And therefore I find myself in agreement with you and appreciate your post which read as follows (it is worth reposting):

“And I wouldn’t expect the conservative press to do anything other than emphasise the fact that Manning, a US citizen and regarding himself solely as such, signed the US military’s version of the Official Secrets Act, was put in a position of trust, and betrayed it comprehensively. Which is the (uncomfortable, maybe) fact. He got the book thrown at him -predictably, since discipline needs to be maintained in anyone’s armed forces – and IMO got a reasonably fair disposal in the circumstances”

That is a very fair summary of one aspect of this affair.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By the way and in that connection let me be more precise on what I posted on the previous thread to the effect that I seemed to detect a slightly sour smell to some of the reactions, on that thread, to the verdict of not guilty wrt the charges of aiding the enemy.

I did not of course mean to imply that the Eminences who posted after the verdict had been announced were unhappy for Mr Manning as a person; I am sure that they were pleased with the verdict as far as Mr Manning as an individual was concerned (although it must also be said that the expressions of relief were few and less enthusiastic than I whould have expected).

My point was, rather, that that verdict was a disappointment in that they would have been happier to have seen their narrative of the US being the source of all evil, injustice, repression, etc, etc, confirmed at least as far as this affair was concerned. A guilty verdict on aiding the enemy – with the consequent posssibility (theoretical, to be sure) – of a death sentence would have been just the ticket for some of them.

Tepco Under Increasing Fire Over Nuclear Accident Site
Panel Appointed by Firm Criticize Slow Release of Information

“I’d like to say myself how disappointed and distressed I was when I arrived in Japan,” said Barbara Judge, a former chair of the British Atomic Energy Authority and deputy chair of the panel. “To find that communications with respect to the leak problem have been so difficult and so late was very devastating,” she said.

It’s not perfect and won’t block the very highest frequencies (because of the mesh width in the glass) but it is fairly good. You can try putting your phone in and ringing it. It normally won’t ring (mine doesn’t). If it still has 5 bars and rings then it may be time to get a new microwave before you cook yourself.

“And I wouldn’t expect the conservative press to do anything other than emphasise the fact that Manning, a US citizen and regarding himself solely as such, signed the US military’s version of the Official Secrets Act, was put in a position of trust, and betrayed it comprehensively. Which is the (uncomfortable, maybe) fact. He got the book thrown at him -predictably, since discipline needs to be maintained in anyone’s armed forces – and IMO got a reasonably fair disposal in the circumstances”

Yeah, but what about his duty to expose war crimes. That’s a higher duty established at Nuremberg surely, or did the Nazis just creep back in and change the rules again.

If Manning is sentenced to more than one year of confinement or punitively discharged, his case is immediately appealed to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals, WHERE LIND WAS RECENTLY PROMOTED, Legal experts I spoke with are eager to read Lind’s detailed findings (expected in the coming weeks) to try to understand how she could have reached the decision that the information released by Manning related to national defense. The charged documents did invite potential embarrassment. A confidential CIA report was titled “Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission—Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough,” and another secret CIA report was titled “What If Foreigners See the United States as an ‘Exporter of
terrorism’?”

Scott was a Tory propaganda merchant. He did for the Highlander what the dime novel did for the Native American, portrayed them as primitive savages to justify their persecution.

His romanticised historical lies have been used by several countries to brainwash their people into going out and killing and getting killed for their rich elites. Not least America, Mark Twain reckoned the civil war was largely down to him.

It’s thanks to the likes of Scott Bradley Manning has been on trial for putting humanity before country.

“Schenck said Lind has already been informed that she will take up a new position, as a judge on the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals, when the Manning trial ends. And she said Lind will not be swayed by the politics of the case.”

Fred, some of what you say is right. Scott was a Tory. So were a lot of poets. Most of them in fact. That does not mean they could not write poetry. Kipling likewise was an establishment figure, and a freemason, as was Scott. The question people should be asking is why to be a successful poet or novelist you often need the help of spurious secret groups. T. S. Eliot was another. Cats, the musical, was based on Eliot’s poem Opossum’s Book of Practical Cats, and this poem was about members of Eliot’s lodge. I thought everybody knew that. But if not, why not? I write, with Dan Rodger, musicals. They have no chance in this playing field which is supposedly ‘on the level’ but in actual fact very biased towards favourites.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel, we learnt at school, and that poem which I think was Canto 13 was presented as ‘Love of Country’. Scott knew his craft. I was being a bit contentious with the ‘doubly dying’ which quite clearly is aimed at those who are unpatriotic rather than those who are opposed to foreign influence on our government. I love my country. I depise my government.

But I can’t divulge, otherwise I will have to kill you….
Now to Manning.
Unlike William Caley of Charlie company, murdering women and children in My Lai, he was allowed to procriate after seven years and spread his genes, Bradley Manning has been said to face 126 years in prison, for publicising a massive war crime and some tell tale truth about diplomatic two facedness, big deal, the bulk of information was available to 4 million people and ‘over classified’.

Bradley Manning has served his country more than dragons serve theirs, allegedly, and he should be freed after having served three years in military confinement for showing up some pretty paranoid roid’s in charge of a helicopter, not to speak of Roid command, coming down hard on journo’s.

Fact is. This was a war crime and nobody is squaring up for it, except the messenger Bradley Manning. Non of these coward pilots have shit for brains or should be in charge of cloud 9 they seem to be sitting on.

Nevermind. They are children who think they are men. They cannot separate war-games from reality. Some of them might never grow up. But the deaths they caused mean that others will never grow up. America is sick. It is the contents of a vomit bag. I have no adequate words to describe it. It needs to change drastically.

Which puts the notion that the US military was simply responding in a routine way to Manning’s actions, into some sort of perspective. At last we have a real American hero from the Iraq debacle. And, predictably, nobody wants anything to do with him.

“I also noticed a debate about the nature of compassion, which is obviously an
emotion that Jemand has never experienced, otherwise he/she would not have
written the nonsense that was posted, and despite Dreoilin attempts to explain this
most natural of human emotions, we can only conclude that unfortunately Jemand
is one of those emotionally impaired individuals who are simply incapable of
experiencing such basic human emotions.”
. . . .

A flaky comment from a flaky commentator.

There was no “debate” about the nature of compassion, just a discussion about the pretensions of people (in particular, lefties) who purport to feel it more than others and the superiority they think that it confers upon them. I also made the observation, in other words, that compassion is of little or no value if it is absent of action. It is only an emotion, after all, and not an expression of commitment or effort to perform a moral duty. For that, I am accused of being incompassionate, of never having experienced compassion. Well, beat me up Scotty!

And there was the usual misunderstanding that I often observe here, to no effect, that when one makes an unpopular observation, one is falsely accused of endorsing or embodying that thing that is observed – ie conflation of “is” with “ought”.

But I shouldn’t expect so much from a bunch of ordinary people with limited perception and intelligence who routinely masturbate on this blog, stroking their own egos and other’s who pander to their very primitive need for emotional validation. How very good Macky must feel about himself. I guess that’s what this blog is all about – feeling better about yourself by attacking others.

‘“Pathetic and infantile responses from the Resident Invigilator…” sobs the Frequent Poster, who is too thick to see that I was agreeing with her.’

Not ‘sobbing’ and not ‘too thick’ to see that the RI’s version of ‘agreement’ was an excuse to turn it into a rant against public servants who unlike their masters, the politicians, often do difficult jobs for not great rates of pay. The RI would not make the grade as a social worker.

The child’s mother was obviously a plausible liar, describing the weight loss as an ‘eating disorder’ which was being treated. It sounds as if she was under the control of a psychopathic bully but I am not defending her. She could have left and taken the children with her. Daniel’s brother was also beaten.

I wish all government secrets would come out in the open. Every nation is as bad as each other, it’s how they go about their business and how well they hide. Torture does not necessarily have to be physical. Unfortunately some countries still have not developed more modern techniques.

Bradley Manning has served his country more than dragons serve theirs, allegedly

By about six months as far as I can work out, N. Three years of which time has been in jail, and I readily concede that three years in jail awaiting trial is not acceptable at all. I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t happen in the UK. Although Colchester wasn’t reckoned by its ex-inmates* to be a soft option in my time.

“that the RI’s version of ‘agreement’ was an excuse to turn it into a rant against public servants who unlike their masters, the politicians, often do difficult jobs..”
_____________

I hardly think that three lines constitute a rant.

We agreed that various people (the school, the social workers) weren’t up to the job in this particular case.

And one has the impression that this holds in many areas of public life (including the geniuses of the banking world, lest someone should ask why I don’t mention them…). This high and seemingly generalized level of incompetence is why I incline to the cock-up interpretation of events rather than to the malevolent conspiracy interpretation which appears to find general favour on this blog.

Back to the former Labour govt : I believe it is fact that a good deal of the employment growth under New Labour was due to hirings in the public sector. And I think it is also a fact – indeed, some of you have posted in this sense – that greater numbers do not seem to have resulted in an appreciable improvement on service and outcomes. But what these hirings did do was to increase the number of people who might reasonably be expected to vote Labour at subsequent elections.

PS – for what it’s worth, I also happen to think that there are few if any crimes worse than the martyring of innocent, defenceless children as shown by the Daniel Pelka case.

Yeah, but what about his duty to expose war crimes. That’s a higher duty established at Nuremberg surely, or did the Nazis just creep back in and change the rules again.

Good point. Conceded. However, he is not being punished (at least ostensibly) for exposing the crimes. He is being punished for the formal offence of revealing secret military information. Trouble is, when you’re in the forces, they’ve got you by the balls. And military law is quite separate from the civilian variety.

It’s no accident that the entire German military apparatus had to be defeated before Nuremberg could happen…

They failed to mitigate the risks of war crimes and of information security threats, both technical and human.

They gave a person, who manifested emotional and behavioural problems, broad access to classified material that was easily copied to removable media and transported away from an ostensibly secured site.

And they failed to provide a protocol by which Manning could discharge a *legal* duty to respond to what appeared, prima facie, to be war crimes committed by the US military.

The US military also failed to adequately deal with those war crimes, making their efforts to prosecute Manning for exposing them grossly disproportionate when compared to their own malfeasance.

Basically, Manning had conflicting obligations and was provided with no formal means to properly discharge all of those duties.

… Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler…wrote: “Promising though William Hague is, it is a bit difficult to see what a 21-year-old will contribute as a special adviser in the Treasury.” The message was then conveyed back across Whitehall to Nigel Lawson in only slightly more diplomatic language. A note of a meeting between Mrs Thatcher and her Chancellor said: “The appointment of someone so young and with so little experience would be an embarrassment to the Government and would be resented by more experienced people in the Conservative Research Department.”

After graduating in 1992, Osborne did a few part-time jobs including as a data entry clerk, typing the details of recently deceased into a NHS computer database.[13] He also briefly worked for a week at Selfridges, mainly re-folding towels.[13]

In 1993, Osborne originally intended to pursue a career in journalism. He was shortlisted for but failed to gain a place on The Times trainee scheme, and instead did freelance work on the Peterborough diary column of The Daily Telegraph. Some time later, an Oxford friend of his, journalist George Bridges, alerted Osborne to a research vacancy at Conservative Central Office.[13]

Osborne joined the Conservative Research Department in 1994 and became head of its Political Section. One of his first roles was to go to Blackpool and observe the October 1994 Labour Conference.[14]

Between 1995 and 1997 he worked as special adviser to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Douglas Hogg (during the BSE crisis)

Just like that: Head of the CRO’s Political Section. And next year, a spad. Bet Fourteen Pints wishes he’d done a week folding towels…

Komodo, you scaly-backed lizard, I can’t take this. Agree you were talking about the military when you said: “Three years of which time has been in jail, and I readily concede that three years in jail awaiting trial is not acceptable at all. I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t happen in the UK.”

Babar Ahmad (8 years in UK prison without charge) and Talha Ahsan (6 years in UK prison without charge) are both now in Supermax torture chambers in the US and still haven’t gone to trial. The Yanks are supposed to have evidence of their crimes but their trials have been put off for another six months (now March 2014) and they will probably put them off further unless these obviously innocent prisoners plea bargain. The Yanks are disgusting. Theresa May is disgusting. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is disgusting. They bring shame on my good name.

Sure. Their security was, and probably still is, criminally lousy. But I say again, Manning is subject to military law, not civilian law. By that law he is guilty as charged. Manning signed the terms and conditions when he joined. The terms and conditions are designed with the intention of maintaining discipline and reasonably good order, with preserving the necessary secrecy involved in any kind of military operation, and making sure that the right backs are covered – from a drunken squaddie kicking a civilian in a pub to the general on whose watch a helicopter crew mows down three journalists and assorted brown civilians in a war zone. The army looks after its own.

John, let me be clear, I was talking about the UK military, not the immigration fuckup. Your feet don’t touch in the UK forces. About turn, quick march, guardroom, Colchester, everything at the double and no quarter given.

I guessed that Komodo. I’m going to quick march out of this discussion because I believe that what is wrong with the military is the inability for lower ranks to question orders especially when they are immoral. War is immoral. The military wage war. Professor Carlo Cipolla summed up my view. Man is still a savage: but the weapons at his disposal are more sophisticated.

A Glasshouse, or The Glasshouse was the term for a military prison in the British Army. The first military prisons were established in 1844. The term Glasshouse originated at the military prison at Aldershot, which had a glazed roof. Over time, the sobriquet came to be applied to all British Army prisons. This prison, called the Detention Barracks, had begun as several barracks in 1856, before being replaced by a single, large building, modelled on civilian prisons, in 1870. This building was destroyed by fire in a riot of 1946.

Glasshouses gained a reputation for brutality, as depicted in Allan Campbell McLean’s novel, The Glass House, and the Sean Connery film, The Hill. Today, the British Army has only one remaining prison, the Military Corrective Training Centre at Colchester. It has a special unit for convicts who are being transferred to HM Prison Service to serve their sentences, which is for anyone serving a sentence over three months.

The Glasshouse at Colchester has been described in the ITV Anglia TV-documentary series, “The Real Red Caps”, (2003).

News Briefing from the state broadcaster on Radio 4 this morning focussed on the ‘outing’ of Dr Kelly. A recording of the war mongering Menzies Campbell was played. There was no mention of the haste of Lord Falconer (B.Liar’s flatmate when they were pupil barristers) in appointing Hutton three hours after Dr Kelly’s body was found. Hutton’s ‘inquiry’ began 10 years ago today. Vile.

He became a flatmate of Tony Blair when they were both young barristers in London in the late 1970s in Wandsworth. They had first met as pupils at rival schools in the 1960s. At school, he dated Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, an ex-girlfriend of Blair’s, immediately after that relationship. While Blair went into politics, Falconer concentrated on his legal career. He practised from Fountain Court Chambers in London, and became a Queen’s Counsel in 1991.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Falconer,_Baron_Falconer_of_Thoroton

John – I do know where you’re coming from, and I applaud the direction. But…the inability for lower ranks to question orders especially when they are immoral.
That’s specifically built into the system, not because of any systematic disregard of morality, but simply because democracy doesn’t work when someone’s shooting at your unit. War is immoral. Yes. By and large. The military wage war. But, other than in countries with military juntas (and it comes to the same thing in the end) it is governments which initiate war. The military then does what it has agreed to be paid for. The moral turpitude is the government’s. Most servicemen I’ve known come across as starched Puritans compared with politicians…Man is still a savage: but the weapons at his disposal are more sophisticated.
Never said a truer word. It’s in our DNA to kill rival tribesmonkeys.

Komodo, it reads like you are advocating for the correctness of both the charges and convictions against Manning.

Were they?

A conviction does not confer upon itself correctness as demonstrated by the many successful appeals against convictions.

Furthermore, contracts between an employer and employee are not automatically compliant with the law. And some laws do not automatically prevail, particularly if they do not conform with predominating laws such as the US Constitution.

What we see with Manning’s conviction is a flagrant exercise in scapegoating of a young man who was placed in a legal Catch 22 about which others have correctly alluded to the Nuhremberg trials. Manning was supplying intelligence products that combat units were acting upon. He was therefore embedded in the military processes that often result in deadly outcomes and in doing so, was legally obligated to respond to perceived war crimes that he became aware of – and he did.

If Manning failed to respond in the way that he did, could he have been held culpable of concealing a war crime? What would be his defence? “I was ordered to shut up and mind my own business – just followed orders”.

Komodo 1 Aug, 2013 – 12:30 pm
“But…the inability for lower ranks to question orders especially when they are immoral.
That’s specifically built into the system, not because of any systematic disregard of morality, but simply because democracy doesn’t work when someone’s shooting at your unit.”

No it doesn’t work when someones shooting at your unit. But most of a soldiers life is spent not being shot at.

It is provenly possible to have an army of politically engaged soldiers who are involved in the decision making process and encouraged to take moral positions. The great examples that I know are the anarchist armies in spain and ukraine. Although hotly contested it appears that these armies were also genuinely liberating in a way that most armies are not.

It is likely these two facts, a democratic decision process within the army and the armys seemingly unique desire to not retain power, are not unrelated.

Jemand:Catch 22 – damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Precisely. Catch-22 was about the USAF….

No, seriously. What happened with Manning was that (a) US security was its usual abysmally lackadaisical self. (b) Someone with absolutely no “need to know” the contents of the material he was handling, got to know the contents and (b) distributed them far and wide, (c)severely compromising the organisation for which he worked. (d) A book of rules exists for the purpose, and it was thrown at him. He was found guilty of actual offences which he had actually committed, and sentenced according to existing guidelines. A miscarriage of justice: one or more senior officers in the security chain should have been summarily shot at dawn, but it doesn’t work that way.

It occurs to me that what keeps an army functional is the near-certainty in the mind of its rank and file that what the army can do to you if you don’t conform is probably worse than what the enemy can do to you when you do.

Sooo…

A conviction does not confer upon itself correctness as demonstrated by the many successful appeals against convictions.

Precisely the reverse is demonstrated by the many unsuccessful appeals…

If Manning failed to respond in the way that he did, could he have been held culpable of concealing a war crime? What would be his defence? “I was ordered to shut up and mind my own business – just followed orders”.

I’d guess that 50% minumum of front-line troops in the US and UK armies have knowledge of war crimes under one definition or another. They happen quite a lot in war. Going to lock the lot up?

Manning took a risk. He must surely have known that the shit would hit the fan. That’s not a secret. I hope he still thinks it was worth it: who knows, it may be.

Sounds great, doesn’t work in practice, Phil. I’ve agreed with John, above, that war is immoral. Therefore any argument for war is immoral (if you like). Therefore all ‘those’ (define please,) requiring a war are permitted to think that indoctrination is acceptable.

Counter-example for you: the Viet Cong. Indoctrinated and disciplined up to the hilt. Not only got the hearts and minds (and balls) of the population, but also won. What armies are for.

Consider also a bunch of random lads off the dole queue in Liverpool. Touchy feely doesn’t work if you want them fighting someone else in three months. It’s sheer practicality, morality is an unaffordable luxury.

That conflict is ineviatable because competition drives evolution, you know all the dark hobsian stuff, is an ideology.

You mean competition doesn’t drive evolution? Oh, boy…Still, you might accept that dwindling resources will continue to drive competition (and conflict), even if evolution has too little time to respond.

“Only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. Those who would not fire did not run or hide—in many cases they were willing to risk greater danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages. They simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges”

I recently underwent anti-bribery training at my workplace. UK citizens are forbidden to attempt or benefit from bribery anywhere in the world. Perhaps we could do with a similar law on torture, forbidding UK citizens to participate in it or willingly receive information obtained using it.

Yes they did. I just dont think that negates them as examples. Their eventual defeat does not mean they were an ineffective fighting force. They most certainly were not. These anarchist armies scored impressive victories and were a real force.

They are examples of effective armies where debate was encouraged. That is all I am saying. All the examples of armies not like this in the world do not disappear these examples.

Phil: I don’t doubt that a collection of motivated people with an agreed common purpose can form an effective fighting force even if they are allowed to debate their schedule on a democratic basis. I certainly don’t believe that the Republican Army in Spain was quite as democratic as you allege: command was still hierarchical. And there’s not much evidence that either side was any more moral than the other:

Available information suggests that there were about 500,000 deaths from all causes during the Spanish Civil War. An estimated 200,000 died from combat-related causes. Of these, 110,000 fought for the Republicans and 90,000 for the Nationalists. This implies that 10 per cent of all soldiers who fought in the war were killed.

It has been calculated that the Nationalist Army executed 75,000 people in the war whereas the Republican Army accounted for 55,000. These deaths takes into account the murders of members of rival political groups.

It is estimated that about 5,300 foreign soldiers died while fighting for the Nationalists (4,000 Italians, 300 Germans, 1,000 others). The International Brigades also suffered heavy losses during the war. Approximately 4,900 soldiers died fighting for the Republicans (2,000 Germans, 1,000 French, 900 Americans, 500 British and 500 others).

Around 10,000 Spanish people were killed in bombing raids. The vast majority of these were victims of the German Condor Legion.

The economic blockade of Republican controlled areas caused malnutrition in the civilian population. It is believed that this caused the deaths of around 25,000 people. All told, about 3.3 per cent of the Spanish population died during the war with another 7.5 per cent being injured.

After the war it is believed that the government of General Francisco Franco arranged the executions of 100,000 Republican prisoners. It is estimated that another 35,000 Republicans died in concentration camps in the years that followed the war.

Thanks for the Fallujah clip. Sickening and heartbreaking. It makes one realise that the “Colateral Murder” video is just a tiny drop in an ocean of depravity being committed in our names.

@Someone. 11 25am

Thanks. Fukushima, as with the Fallujah, chilling and disgusting.

Ignoring or denigrating evidence seems to be a consistent plank in the response of the elites and their servants, whether in WHO or corporate media.

Doesn’t that show how much thee elites fear people really finding them out?

@Komodo and Phil

Isn’t the underlying question something along the lines of how do we, as social and military cultures, agree on a mix of these conflicting characteristics?

At this stage in our social and technical evolution how best do we empower our (mainly) young men to fiercely defend their home-places and communities without tempting them to run the show and go off plundering for generals, royals and other kleptocrats?

Where, on the spectrum, do we choose? On one end the spontanious networked militia of the Samburu, and Dinka and on the other, the total-obedience-demanding hierarchies of Us and Nazi military. Is a happy medium possible or do we have to accept that those with the biggest bombs and most obedient soldiers will always have the upper hand?

Have we taken a turn down an evolutionary dead-end where our technical prowess fosters, for the elites, the delusion that they can get us to blast our way to their goals without destroying the ecological matrix where it’s all played out? Or will the horrors of these times be looked back on by our descendents as chapters in humanity’s painful journey out of barbarism?

Mutiny has been a game-changer many a time from Herodotus’s time to the present.

If “…only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy”(Thanks Technicolour. 3 05pm), then how many can really be counted on to fire on their own people?

I take heart from what is playing out at present in South America. It seems to me Venezuala for example would have long ago slid back into 1950s os 60s style military dictatorship were it not for the lower ranks of the military taking a stand for their communities before their commanding officers.

Two films I find really encouraging are Oliver Stone’s “South of the Border” and the Irish documentary “Inside the Coup”.

No I didn’t say that. I am questioning the orthodoxy that competition is the driver of evolution. We are sold this idea constantly. It is an ideology that declares war and poverty to be natural jungle law.

However, the science shows that cooperation is also a big driver of evolution.

“…only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy”(Thanks Technicolour. 3 05pm), then how many can really be counted on to fire on their own people?”

I think there are various military histories which show that only a minority of soldiers actually do most of the killing. Arrows shot away from action. Swords not scratched.

Unfortunately the military has long learnt this lesson. For example, changing the practise range target from a bull eyse to a human shadow had a huge impact on desensitising soldiers to kill. Now soldiers desensitise with computer games. Part of the training.

Did you know the columbine boys had hit rates worthy of special forces. How could this be? It is speculated that their years of shoot em up games, which they obsessed about right up to the killings, desensitised them to be able to commit the act of murder.

So we are in the area of violent films and games. Does violent stimulis encourage violent behaviour? Well the military seems to think so. Science seems to show so. But politics denys it.

Andrews’s wife Moira is a lawyer and works for G3 which according to Sky News just now were involved in the Liam Fox/Adam Werritty affair, paying for their flights I think I heard the Sky reporter say. Oh what a tangled web we weave…..

Onle 3500 studies come to that conclusion so far. Desensitisation to violence is surely one of our culture’s defining characteristics, along with emphazising competition over co-operation.

Going by our historical record I’d have to agree with your outlook K, but I don’t rule out some kind of epochal phase-change either, just like what happens in insect colonies when numbers, food supply or environment change beyond critical tipping-points. So many of our variables are totally unprecedented. Probably the only thing we can expect is that the future won’t look like we predict.

If we have descendents to write history, maybe it will be because they have worked out how to be so powerful without destroying the game altogether, um I think.

I feel it’s worthwhile committing to the best futures and the most thriving co-operative cultures we can envisage. The fat lady hasn’t sung, yet.

Sofia
“Going by our historical record I’d have to agree with your outlook K”

The official history of ineviatable war? Other perspectives are available. Conflict happens but the real law of the jungle is cooperation.

There was an interesting traffic experiment undertaken in germany and holland a few years back. Called shared space, I am unsure of it’s current status. All traffic regulations were removed. All the lines, lights, one ways etc etc. Everything. Of course pessimists predicted chaos. There’ll be fights, jams, deaths. But in every town that tried do you know what happened? The accident count went down, the average journey time went down. Every time. Remarkable. Cooperation even rules the roads.

Sofia,
i got through with that second link, cheers it was at 1,560 signatures

@Someone, thanks for that Japan link, and interesting post on whether or not we will become intelligent
That point is actually a major part of the Drake Equation, the Last letter L = the lifetime a communicating Intelligence survives. – or as Carl Sagan wondered – do civilizations destroy themselves soon after developing technology

It’s also mentioned as one of the factors in the Fermi Paradox – where are they.

The state wants to evict 1,300 Palestinians from their homes in an army firing zone in the West Bank in part because training there saves the Israel Defense Forces time and money, according to the state’s response to two petitions against the mass eviction

“The majority of Spain’s bankrupt local councils are to be found along the Mediterranean coast, particularly in Andalusia and Valencia, which were badly hit by the collapse of the construction and property-development market.”

You’re v welcome, Sofia. I’m embracing along with you Sadly, as Phil points out, they have been working hard to come up with ways round our instinct not to kill each other – but they’re all still attempts to crush our nature. they don’t last.

Btw has anyone come across these people? Apparently Chomsky wrote the preface to a book about them so they are less obscure than the design of their website would suggest. Too many slogans for me, but still: